Environmental
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We try hard to be environmentally conscious with our entire lives.  This includes the building of the Spiderhollow from design & concept through living with and around our shy acre of environmental influence.

***Anytime you re-use or re-cycle a product rather than buying new, you help the environment.  You extend the benefits of the product rather than encouraging more energy to be spent creating a new product.  The carbon energy used to produce that re-used product has already been spent whereas if you buy New - you are the end consumer & initiator of more carbon energy adding to the worlds carbon energy disbursement .  

Re-cycling or re-use of any product reduces your carbon footprint.

I am quite proud in feeling we made the effort and tried where we could.  We do have areas that we can improve, and will continue to investigate improvements and hope to continue to enhance our best use and lowest impact on the environment.  Many of the things we did were financially rewarding yet still an environmental benefit because we did many things ourselves rather than paying for professionals to do them.  This reduced the spreading of carbon energy use and usually we were able to use common tools and products rather than outsourcing to commercial or professionals to get something done.

At this point I am not sure how to structure the big picture, so I am going to simply start by making a list of environmental elements, uses, or situations.  Later, I hope to analyze the list and figure out a way to do a layout and display of the information.  If you have any ideas of how I can do that, please let me know your suggestions.

A = Estimated Average Carbon number value for the described situation is 100.
U = Used % of that 100 Carbon number value we actually USED for the described situation.

Category Description A U
Recycle Purchased older established land to re-use instead of clearing a new plot or purchasing cookie cutter home. 100 50
Recycle Purchased a used kit of building material; 5,600 lineal feet of Cedar Sing logs - instead of purchasing new building materials.  (Exterior walls & Interior perimeter walls).  This would have been a huge carbon energy savings, however, I had to expend much energy and used lots of sandpaper and electricity to fix or re-finish all the Logs.
(Opposite would be to purchase standard dimensional lumber for framed building including exterior/interior covering & finishing)
100 50
Economy Building plans designed and drawn by Roy Harvey
(Opposite would be paying an architect, designer, or buying cookie cutter building plans)
100 10
Recycle
Economy
We did have to cut 4 trees for the footprint of our house.  We planned the location to reduce the tree cutting as much as possible and have left several trees in extremely close proximity to the house.  At the same time we did have to cut 3 other trees due to disease.  We hired a portable Saw Mill to mill those trees into usable building material to help recycle/reuse the material. We used the lumber throughout the building process which reduced the amount of lumber we would need to purchase new.  We also transplanted much of the ground cover within the footprint area instead of destroying it. 100 20
Recycle
Economy
Had to demolish 2 outbuildings for the footprint.  We re-used 80% of the lumber from the out buildings in many places of the building process which reduced the amount of lumber we would need to purchase new.  100 50
Energy Using the Sing Logs provided 5" of solid Cedar plus 3" expanded foam for insulation.  We achieved a high R value at a minimum cost due to the Cedar Log thickness and encapsulation of the expandable foam.  In addition, using the Cedar Sing Logs made it so we did Not need any "finish" materials on the outside or the inside of all perimeter walls.  No siding, sheetrock, nothing more needed to be added to the finish of the structure. 
(Opposite would require more intensive insulation, and much finish material & products.)
100 20
Conservation We installed rain barrels to capture and re-use rain water.  Although this concept works it isn't providing as much gain as I had envisioned.  The 50 gallon rain barrels fill up extremely fast in our Seattle rains.  Although redistributing the water works, it is usually so rainy that redistribution is only a viable process during 2-3 months in summer.  Visually, the rain barrels we used look cool - they are big oak wine casks and we use rain chains from the roof to collect the rain water. 
(Opposed process is rain gutters dumping onto the ground.)
100 50
Recycle
Economy
All the concrete work was done by us:  My neighbor was in charge of all the concrete work.  We re-used lumber from the outbuildings and re-used old form boards or cut them from outbuilding plywood for all the footing and stem wall forms.  All the stakes, lots of support braces, piling blocks, hangers & holders were all re-used lumber.  Friends helped pour all the cement  as well as do all the cement finish work.
(Opposite would be to hire a contractor to have all the work done)
100 30
Energy 50% of the lighting in the house is using fluorescent power saving bulbs 100 50
Energy Wired the house with 12/2 wire - thicker, more costly, but less electrical loss and better overall performance.  The benefits were probably a wash. 100 100
Recycle
Economy
Interior Stairs and many Decorative finish pieces were made from the trees we cut. 100 25
Recycle
Economy
When demolishing the Trailer we Recycled any Metals, saved good fixtures to pass on and pulled as much wood out of the debris to use as firewood instead of taking to the dump or landfill 100 50
Recycle
Economy
Purchased 1/2 the doors from yard sales and purchased many feet of assorted lumber from a yard sale to be used on all the window casings, sills, supports, etc.  1X2, 2X2, 1X4, 1X6, 1X8, 1X12, 2X6, 2X8 100 50
       
Energy, Recycle, Economy We drive Diesel vehicles - Both use Home Cooked bio-diesel and one runs on straight vegetable oil.  See Grease4Fuel.com 100 30
  Garden out back provides some fresh groceries, healthy labor.  100 90
  In addition we are avid Composters and Recyclers.  (we put 1 small garbage can out for pickup Once per month.  The rest of the neighbors put out 1 or more large cans each week. 100 40

 

 

SpiderHollow Sing Log Building project:  Lot purchase '97.  Permitted 8/20/03 Ground breaking 8/30/03 Move in 9/20/05

"Man did not weave the web of life -- he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

~ Chief Seattle, 1854 ~